


Electrolytic (Current News)

by PresquePommes



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: A Threesome With Science, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Possible Inhuman Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:09:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos can't seem to keep science out of the bedroom. After all, he is involved with someone who may well be the most scientifically interesting man in the United States.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Electrolytic (Current News)

**Author's Note:**

> Excuse the pun in the title. I couldn't resist. But yeah, this isn't explicit, but it is heavily suggestive, and it definitely would be if Carlos didn't bring his work home. 
> 
> Or, you know, if home wasn't essentially the basis of his work. It's all semantics.

He’s human, Carlos thinks.

At least, Carlos is about seventy percent certain that Cecil is human. Eighty to eighty-five, if he generously overlooks that one time Cecil mysteriously gained the ability to perfectly narrate the events occurring in a townsperson’s life as they occurred, as well as the thoughts and memories those events evoked. That could’ve been a Night Vale thing. Maybe he’d been reading from a script.

Probably not. Seventy percent it is.

He certainly feels human, though, at least to the touch. He’s got the right body temperature, a regular heartbeat that leans just this side of rapid, and there are fine hairs at the nape of his neck, marking the spot just before his hairline obscures the skin.

His skin is smooth, but not unnaturally so. His shoulders are peppered with tiny scars like warm braille under Carlos’ fingertips, but invisible to his eyes.

His spine arches towards the bed in response to the right sort of touch. Sweat is beading on his skin. His thigh muscles are shaking. He’s got his forehead pressed to the pillow, the back of his neck exposed submissively.

All very human traits and behaviours.

Carlos is about seventy-five percent certain that Cecil is human.

That extra five percent is variable depending on whether or not Cecil is just close _enough_ to human to seem human.

There’s something about him that trips Carlos’ suspicions, and he can’t quite pin down what.

Maybe it’s that he doesn’t seem to blink enough. Maybe it’s the absent way he smiles. Maybe it’s the faint static shocks that leap between his fingers and Carlos’ arm sometimes, little arcs of purple-white electricity that Cecil insists are a result of spending all day on the old shag carpets in the station.

Maybe it’s the fact that the first time one of their kisses lasted longer than a chaste moment, Carlos realized that Cecil tasted faintly of copper and ozone.

Maybe it’s because sometimes, when Cecil’s eyes are still adjusting to the occasionally dim lighting in Carlos’ lab, he would swear there’s a moment where the pupils of his eyes aren’t dark and slightly reflective, as they should be, but faintly transparent, as if Carlos could peer in and see the inner workings of his eyes if he only cared to look.

Carlos is about sixty-five percent certain that Cecil is human.

That missing five percent is variable depending on whether or not Cecil is just affected by whatever seems to be affecting Night Vale.

The other sixty-five is variable depending on whether or not Cecil _is_ what seems to be affecting Night Vale.

When he turns his head inquisitively, pupils blown out with arousal and hair straggled across his forehead with sweat, he certainly seems human enough.

When he pants Carlos’ name with a tone of slightly exasperated pleading, Carlos could almost be certain that he is human.

But the moment inevitably passes when static builds up between them and arcs between Cecil’s hip and Carlos’ left hand with a distracting snap of electricity. Carlos pauses to shake the feeling back into his fingers. Cecil laughs. Later, Cecil will shrug and suggest that it was caused by the friction between his knees and the sheets, just like Carlos had theorized the first time it had happened.

Carlos has begun to doubt the veracity of this hypothesis, but he knows he’s given Cecil a better explanation than he had originally, so the corner he’s backed himself into is entirely his own fault.

Cecil will smile absently at him, and Carlos won’t be sure if he’s genuinely airheaded or just ingeniously good at seeming as though he is.

Now, though, Carlos flips him over, knees aching, and Cecil stares up at him with heavy-lidded eyes and runs his fingers through the hair hanging down around Carlos’ face, just like he always does.

When they kiss, he still tastes faintly metallic under the lingering pungency of the coffee they’d shared earlier. Carlos thinks about his mouth.

Despite his considerable fondness for him, Carlos had hesitated to enter into a physical relationship with Cecil. His experiences in Night Vale had seemed to promise that if the dates were weird, the sex was probably even weirder. He’d been relieved to find that wasn’t the case.

Mostly.

The first time he’d let Cecil go down on him, his spine had tingled and he’d experienced a sensation in his mouth not unlike licking a nine-volt battery. Cecil had smiled apologetically before blankly denying all knowledge of what had just happened, and with what appeared to be perfect sincerity.

It hadn’t been unpleasant, but it certainly had been _weird_.

Mercifully, aside from the unusually high buildup of static electricity, the sex had turned out to be as normal as it could reasonably be expected to be with someone like Cecil. Were Carlos less invested in the sexual aspect of his relationship, he’d propose doing some tests in the interests of getting to the bottom of the whole static thing, which he still found slightly unnerving, but Cecil is a person who is easily distracted, and Carlos has his concerns about the very real possibility that the suggestion could cause him to view sex as an inherently scientific act.

While Cecil’s enthusiasm for all things scientific is certainly endearing, his ability to overthink and consequently fail spectacularly at anything related to science is the stuff of legend amongst Carlos’ team. That given due consideration, he doesn’t think it’s quite worth the risk.

So he doesn’t question it when Cecil wraps his legs around his waist and breathes his faintly electric taste into Carlos’ mouth.

After all, he’s still about seventy percent certain that Cecil is human, and that simply isn’t enough to formulate a definitive conclusion about the matter.

Such things require further testing.


End file.
